A Comparative Study of Generic Structure of Applied Linguistics and Chemistry Research Articles: The Case of Discussions

This genre-based study investigated the cross-disciplinary variations in the rhetorical structure of the Discussion sections of 104 applied linguistics and chemistry research articles (RAs), drawing upon Basturkmen’s (2009, 2012) framework and taking into account the new insights proposed by Bhatia (2004), Shehzad (2008), and Lim (2012). To this end, in addition to collecting quantitative data and conducting frequency and chi-square analyses, a number of semistructured interviews were also conducted with some distinguished chemistry scholars and applied linguistics experts to triangulate the data and get a fuller understanding of the quantitative results. Results of the chi-square analyses revealed significant variations in the way the authors in the 2 disciplines employed moves, steps, and substeps to realize the purpose of the Discussion sections. Findings might prove fruitful for postgraduate students and novice researchers in chemistry and applied linguistics to help them write more effective Discussion section in their research articles.